Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again! I hold to you the hands you first beheld, To show they still are free. Methinks I hear A spirit in your echoes answer me, And bid your tenant welcome home again! II. O sacred forms, how proud you look! How high you lift your heads into the sky! How huge you are! how mighty and how free! How do you look, for all your bared brows, More gorgeously majestical than kings Whose loaded coronets exhaust the mine. III. Ye are the things that tower, that shine; whose smile Makes glad--whose frown is terrible; whose forms, Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear Of awe divine; whose subject never kneels In mockery, because it is your boast To keep him free! IV. Ye guards of liberty, I'm with you once again! I call to you With all my voice! I hold my hands to you To show they still are free. I rush to you As though I could embrace you! V. The hour Will soon be here. Oh, when will Liberty Once more be here? Scaling yonder peak, I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow, O'er the abyss his broad-expanded wings Lay calm and motionless upon the air As if he floated there without their aid, By the sole act of his unlorded will, That buoyed him proudly up. VI. Instinctively I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still His airy circle, as in the delight Of measuring the ample range beneath And round about; absorbed, he heeded not The death that threatened him. I could not shoot. 'Twas liberty. I turned my bow aside, And let him soar away. JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES. BATTLE HYMN. I. Father of earth and heaven! I call thy name! Round me the smoke and shout of battle roll; My eyes are dazzled with the rustling flame; Father, sustain an untried soldier's soul! Or life or death, whatever be the goal That crowns or closes round this struggling hour, Thou knowest, if ever from my spirit stole One deeper prayer,'twas that no cloud might lower On my young fame! Oh, hear, God of eternal power! II. God! thou art merciful--the wintry storm, The cloud that pours the thunder from its womb, But show the sterner grandeur of thy form; The lightnings glancing through the midnight gloom, To Faith's raised eye as calm, as lovely come, As splendors of the autumnal evening star, As roses shaken by the breeze's plume, When like cool incense comes the dewy air, And on the golden wave the sunset burns afar. III. God! thou art mighty!--at thy footstool bound, Lie gazing to thee Chance, and Life, and Death; Nor in the Angel-circle flaming round, Nor in the million worlds that blaze beneath Is one that can withstand thy wrath's hot breath-- Woe in thy frown--in thy smile, victory! Hear my last prayer--I ask no mortal wreath; Let but these eyes my rescued country see, Then take my spirit, All-Omnipotent, to thee. IV.